Mey Rahola (León, 1897-Vaucresson, 1959) was one of the first women to make a name for herself in the field of artistic photography in Spain. In a very short time, between 1934 and 1936, her hobby took on a public dimension through exhibitions, awards and publications.

Asserting herself as a photographer beyond the family sphere, Mey Rahola was involved in the construction of the new role of women in the public sphere during the Second Republic: an independent, travelling, empathetic and ironic woman. The war and exile cut short her promising career, but she continued to take ambitious photographs, both professionally during World War II and later as an amateur.

Mey Rahola was a photographer in every way possible for a woman of her time: a modern amateur with public projection in shows and competitions, a professional with a brief vocation as a photojournalist and, finally, a humanist photographer away from the public light. She bequeathed an author's work, signed and ordered, but which has been forgotten for more than half a century. Her personal background has been shaken by history and has remained dispersed in the family for many years. For the first time, the Museu Nacional is highlighting the career of this pioneering photographer. In addition, a total of 14 of her works were acquired during 2020 and 2021, through the National Photography Plan, which can be seen in the exhibition.

This, of an anthological nature, follows a chronological itinerary in three stages that reflect the transformations of her photographic practice, which at the same time follows the rhythm of the great political crises of the century: 1931-1936, 1937-1945 and 1946-1959. It is conceived as a triptych that highlights the coherence of a trajectory that is constantly attentive to the concerns of her time despite the historical ruptures.

Simultaneously, the Museu de l’Empordà will present an exhibition that will focus on the photographic genre in which Mey Rahola stood out the most in the 1930s, that of marine life. Like the photography, sport navigation was for her a space of emancipation and affirmation to which the Civil War, with its trace of destruction and exile, put an end to. There are, however, traces of that modern idyll that allow us to reconstruct it today and reveal the look and artistic trajectory of a unique woman.

This project is part of the activities programme of the Centenary of the Agrupació Fotogràfica de Catalunya 2023.